The Big Four built its fortune on armies of junior consultants and accountants. PwC has started hiring fewer of them. Its US boss says that is the future, and he is comfortable with it.
Paul Griggs, PwC’s US senior partner and chief executive, told Business Insider the firm hired fewer consultants and accountants this year than it did two years ago. He expects that to hold as PwC takes on more data scientists, engineers and machine-learning experts. Last August, an internal deck showed the firm trimming its US campus-hiring targets three years running.
PwC’s own research explains the shift. Its 2026 AI Jobs Barometer, drawn from more than a billion job postings, found professional-services roles among the fastest to change. Jobs that demand more human expertise are growing twice as fast as those where AI lets novices do the work. Pay in the expertise-heavy roles has risen 42% faster since 2021.
The pyramid loses its base
This is a quiet rewiring of how the firm works. Consulting has long run on a pyramid: cheap junior staff at the bottom, expensive partners at the top. Strip out the base and the economics change. Griggs insists the core work in accounting, consulting and finance has not fundamentally changed. What has changed is who gets hired to do it.
